Web Administration I
Information Technology Services
Wilfrid Laurier University
Created by:
Melanie More-Duckworth/Rick Henderson
Training and Education Co-ordinator
Information Technology Services
Telephone: (519) 884-0710 ext 3589
Room: R241C 202 Regina Street
Web server and domain name basics .................................................................................. 1
How and Why ..................................................................................................................... 1
Site Basics........................................................................................................................... 1
Logging In........................................................................................................................... 2
Editing your Bio/Homepage ............................................................................................... 2
Points to Keep in Mind ....................................................................................................... 4
Editing Text Areas .............................................................................................................. 5
Creating Links............................................................................................................. 6
Creating Tables ........................................................................................................... 7
Pages ................................................................................................................................. 10
Anchors ............................................................................................................................. 11
Including Images on a page .............................................................................................. 12
Restricting Access to your Sections, subsections or pages............................................... 12
Linking Related Information or Documents ..................................................................... 13
Making pages Active or Inactive ...................................................................................... 13
Web Page Options............................................................................................................. 14
Uploading Documents to the Documents/Publication Area ............................................. 15
This handout explains the basics of creating, maintaining and updating a web site on the WLU
web server that was brought into use in September 2004. The new web site uses a web-based
content management system that members of the Laurier community can use to update their own
homepages as well as those of their department, Faculty or business unit if they have been given
the appropriate access rights.
Web server and domain name basics
The web site address for the WLU site is www.wlu.ca. The first part of the address “www” refers
to the server name. Almost all web servers are referred to as www but it is really an alias; the
computer in fact has another name. The name of our new server is cubic. If you visit
cubic.wlu.ca, you will see the exact same site as at www.wlu.ca because it is actually the same
computer. Our old server was called info, and you may see pages on the Laurier site that link
back to the old server. In this case you will see the address at the top of your web browser as
info.wlu.ca.
How and Why
Prior to the new site, web pages were updated by sending files (via FTP) to info. Each user who
was responsible for updating or creating pages was given a web server account on info which
created a folder where the web pages were stored. An example of a folder would be for the
Registrar’s Office which would have had a web site address like www.wlu.ca/~wwwregi.
In 2004, the Public Affairs worked to create a new web site design and a web management tool
that allowed people to update web pages simply by filling out a form in their web browser.
Site Basics
The Laurier website is divided into four categories called groups. Web Editors can be assigned
rights to different areas of a website. The categories are:
Level 0 - the Laurier Homepage. It is maintained exclusively by Public Affairs.
Level 1 - Faculty and Departmental Web pages (i.e. Faculty of Science, Faculty of Arts, ITS)
Level 2 - Departmental Web pages (Biology, English, etc...)
Level 3 - Personal Contact/Bio pages for staff and faculty (must have Novell login)
1
Logging In
In order to update your Bio/Homepage, you will need to use your Novell username and
password. Visit http://www.wlu.ca/admin and you see the following screen:
Figure 1: Login Screen
Make sure LDAP (Staff/Faculty) is selected and enter your username and password, then click
the LOGIN button. You are now logged into the Administration system.
Editing your Bio/Homepage
Once you are logged in, you can edit your personal contact information.
Figure 2: Main Menu
You may not see all the links under Site Content, depending on your access level.
• Click on Contact Information
2
Logout Button
Navigation
Field Title
Help box
Fields
Figure 3: Homepage/Bio form
This image shows the Homepage/Bio form, but it is very similar to every form used to create
pages in the new site.
Points of Interest
• Logout button: When you are finished editing pages for the day, make sure you log out
by pressing the Logout button. There is a two hour timeout set for the admin system. If
you are in the middle of editing a page and get called away for what might be two hours
•
•
•
or longer, make sure you press the
button before you leave or you will lose the
work you did.
Navigation: This is also found on every page within the admin system, and allows you to
navigate into different areas.
Fields: Contain information that appears in specific areas of the web page. For more info
on the fields and where they appear on the web page, see the Admin Users Guide.
Field Title: Explains what each field is. The number in brackets beside some fields
indicates the maximum field size. Fields marked with an asterix (*) are required and
you will not be allowed to update the form until all required fields are full.
When you are done updating your bio information, press the
of the form.
button at the top or bottom
3
Here is a sample home page that contains almost all the elements that can be created:
Figure 4: Sample Homepage
Points to Keep in Mind
It is important to remember that you should plan you site layout on paper before entering
information online. You should put down on paper the outline of your web page. Make sure you
have located all of the documents you want to upload, designed any forms that are required, etc.
When you are working on pages you want to scroll to the bottom of the page and uncheck the
Active box.
This will allow you to work on the content of the page without it going “live” when you hit the
button.
4
Editing Text Areas
Entering information into text areas is made simple with the built in text editor. Moving your
mouse pointer over each of the icons will show you what they do.
Figure 5 -HTML editor
Listing of different styles or formats. Good to use for headings.
Allows you to “undo” or “redo an action.
- Cut, copy and paste
- Formatting icons including, bold, italicize, underline, strikethrough, sub
script and super script
- Text justification
- You can create numbered lists, bulleted list and indent or outdent text.
- Equation Editor, Insert Special Character, insert a single line across the page of
text and
5
Creating Links
- Create a link to an out side URL. First select the text you want to link on. Once you select
this the following box will appear:
Enter URL - don't forget
the http://
Type the information you
want to appear when the
user moves their cursor
over the link
Figure 6- Insert Link window
Select where you want the
linked information to
appear (in its own window
or on top of your current
information)
6
Creating Tables
- Wizard to create tables, includes merge cells , split row and split column
Figure 7 - Insert Table window
When inserting a table you are asked to specify the number of rows and columns. This can be
changed afterward if necessary by adding or deleting rows/columns.
The width refers to the amount of the display area the table will take up. You can set it in
Percent which adjusts the table relative to the screen area. Or you can set it in pixels which will
make it a specific width regardless.
If you want to be able to manually adjust the width of each column (ie have one column wider
than the rest) remove the check mark from the Fixed width columns.
Border thickness is measured in pixels and refers to the intensity of the inside and outside
borders of the table.
TIP: If you do not want people to see the border around your table set the Border
thickness to 0. However, this should be done after you have entered the information you
want so you are able to see the cells when entering information. To reset the Borders to 0
at a later point: Right click on the table. Select Table Properties. Reset the Border to 0.
Cell spacing refers to the amount of space between each cell. Again it is measured in pixels.
The larger the number the wider the distance between cells.
7
Cell Padding refers to the distance between the cell wall and where the left justified text starts in
a cell.
Cell padding =space between cell wall and text
Cell Spacing =width of
cell walls
Figure 8 - Exxample of table
Table - Click this tag
to select entire table
tr – click this tag to select
the entire row your
cursor is in
td - click this to select
the cell your cusor is
currently in
You can also edit the table once created by right mouse clicking on the table and using the menu
that appears.
Figure 9- Table drop down menu
8
- Switch to HTML view. This allows you to view your information with the html tags. This
is also the view you would use if you are copying information from current web pages.
- Expand the text viewer to full screen size
- Find and Replace
- Spell Checker
- Word format stripper. Removes unnecessary formatting from Word documents
- Information about the editor program
9
Pages
Pages appear underneath the silver bar on the menu on the left hand side of the screen. You can
create as many pages as you like. Under each main page you can create two other levels of
pages. You can create multiple pages per under each main and sub page/
1st level Page
2nd Level Page
3rd Level Page
If you create a page that is blank but has “sub pages underneath it. The “sub” pages will be
listed in the body of the page.
For example:
10
Anchors
Anchors are used in single pages that contain a lot of information. Instead of including all of
your information in the Body section you use the anchor section to divide it into sections that can
be browsed using the anchors.
Figure 10 - Anchors List
•
•
Click on Add New
This screen will appear:
Name your anchor
Figure 11 - Anchors editor area
•
•
•
•
Remember to
SUBMIT after
entering information
Give the Anchor a name
Specify whether it is Regular (will appear in the menu) or Sub Anchor (sub-section of a
regular anchor – does not appear in the menu)
Enter your information into the HTML editor
Hit SUBMIT.
11
Including Images on a page
Figure 12 - Insert an Image
You can upload images to a section, sub section or page. The suggested size is 200 x 134 pixels.
Images can be edited using Microsoft Picture Manager (which comes with Office 2003) or Corel
Draw, or Adobe Photoshop.
Restricting Access to your Sections, subsections or pages
You are able to restrict access to sections, subsections or pages. By default anyone can view you
webpages. However, if you like you can restrict access to only Novell users , or can create a
custom user name and password to allow access to the areas.
Figure 13 - Page restriction
12
Linking Related Information or Documents
Figure 14 - Linking items to a page
You can provide access to specific documents or headlines or events at the bottom of a section,
subsection or page. The documents do not have to appear on your list of documents on the left
hand menu, because you have to ability to upload documents and not have them show in the
document list but they will be accessible to you in the Related Documents and Research
Publications area.
Making pages Active or Inactive
Allows you to “deactivate” a page so it no longer appears on your site. However,
the content remains available if you want to “re-activate” it later.
13
Web Page Options
After updating your contact information, you will be brought to the Level 3 Groups page for
your area. This page lists all the faculty and staff members in your department or area.
Clicking on the Edit Content dropdown list beside your name will show you the options you
have to edit your home page shown here.
Figure 15 - Web page options
This menu allows you to create:
Pages - individual pages you create, You can put them in a 3 level hierarchy.
Events - appears above the silver line - heading only appears if you have created Events, or
linked to existing Laurier Events (also only appears until the day it is to occur).
News - appears above the silver line - heading only appears if you have created Headlines or
linked to existing Laurier Headlines
Documents - appears above the silver line - heading only appears if you have added documents
or linked to existing documents
Forms - appears above the silver line - heading only appears if you have created an online form,
or are linking to external form, or have uploaded an offline form
Photo Galleries – appears above the silver line. Allows you to upload groups of photos to be
viewed. Photos should be 4 x 6 ‘ high quality images.
The same options are available for those people editing department or faculty level sites.
Learning these basics will enable you to create full sub-sites within the Laurier web site for your
department.
14
Uploading Documents to the Documents/Publication Area
Documents and Publications allow you to make electronic versions of paper documents available
to users of your website. Research publications are simply a type of document that can be
created. When you create a document and indicate that it is a Research Publication, the menu
item “Research Publications” will then appear on the home page of your area. This really just a
link to the Documents section but only shows those that are listed as Research Publications. A
document added in this way can be an electronic copy of the document in word processor or PDF
format, a link to an article on a professional journal website or simply an abstract of a published
paper. The options are almost limitless.
To add a document to your site, you will begin by creating a “details page” that lists pertinent
information about the document, as well as a link that allows the user to either download the
document directly or points them to a web site with further information. The document must
already be completed before you add it to the web database unless you plan on making
unfinished copies of the document available. You cannot edit a document from within the
Document/Publications tool.
To add a document:
• Click inside the dropdown box in the Edit Content column and select
Documents/Publications
• Click
to add a new document. You could also choose
to add a
document to your Documents section that someone else has already posted to the web
database. This will open the web form used to create the details page.
• Choose a Category from the list provided. If you want a category that is not listed, you
can contact Tony Frost in Public Affairs to discuss it. Category is a required field.
• The sub-category is an optional field. You can use whatever sub-category you want, but
it would be best if you and the other Web Editors in your department (and any faculty
who are putting up their own documents) decide on commonly used sub-categories so
your site will have some consistency to it.
• There are three date fields which will all contain today’s date and time. These can be
modified in the future if you make updates to the document and re-upload it. This can be
done without re-creating the whole details page.
• Fill in the Title, Subtitle (if applicable), Summary and Authors fields as required.
• The Document Type field has two options: File and URL. File is for documents that
have been created in a word processor or other type of file that the user will download.
You need to have these files sitting on your local hard drive to upload them. URL is used
when you are simply linking to a web site that contains a document or research
publication.
o If you choose URL, paste the web site address (called a URL) into the Document
URL field, including the http:// prefix at the beginning.
o If you choose File, click on the Browse button to find the file on your hard drive.
ƒ When you have found the file, select it and click Open.
15
ƒ
•
•
•
Click the
button. This will send the document to the web server
and “attach” it to the details page. You are not done yet! This does not
save the document you are working on.
ƒ If the file was attached successfully, a message saying that it was attached
successfully will appear in the Local File area along with the name of the
file. The image below shows this area of the screen after file has been
found but before the Upload button is pressed.
After you have pasted the URL or uploaded the file, set the option labelled “Display on
Documents/Publications Page on Web Site*” to YES if you want to display the file in
your documents section, or NO if you don’t want it visible. If you choose No, you can
still access the document by using it as Related Information in a Section/Subsection/Page.
You can use the Revision Notes field to keep track of when changes were made to the
document.
Review your screen to make sure all the information. Once it is all correct, click
and your document will be available to everyone! (Unless you decided not to list it in the
Documents/Publications Page and have not yet added it anywhere as a related item.)
Figure 16 - Document upload
16